Ukraine-Russia war – live: US ‘to station nuclear weapons in UK’ amid Putin threat

Finland elects a new president on Sunday to lead the country in its new role within NATO after it broke with decades of non-alignment to join the Western defence alliance in response to Russia‘s invasion of Ukraine.

The Nordic country’s admission to NATO last year drew threats of “counter measures” from its vast Russian neighbour. In December, Finland closed its entire border with Russia to passenger traffic in response to a surge in migrants trying to cross. Moscow denied Finnish charges it was sending them there.

All nine candidates are promising a tough stance towards Russia if elected president, a role that leads on foreign and security policy in close cooperation with the government and represents the country at NATO meetings, while also acting as a Commander-in-Chief of the Finnish Defence Forces.

The centre-right National Coalition’s Alexander Stubb has emerged as the frontrunner, with recent polls giving him 22-27% support in a first round, just ahead of liberal Green Party member Pekka Haavisto, who polled at 20-23%.

The nationalist Finns Party’s Jussi Halla-aho is not far behind Haavisto, at 15-18%.

Bank of Finland Governor Olli Rehn and Social Democrat European Union Commissioner Jutta Urpilainen are among the other six candidates from across the political spectrum.

If no one gets more than 50% of the votes cast on Sunday, a runoff will be held between the first and second candidates.

Russian missiles have struck an industrial site in the central Ukrainian city of Kremenchuk, sparking a fire, the local governor has said.

Filip Pronin, governor of Poltava region, wrote on the Telegram messaging app that two Russian ballistic missiles have hit the target in the city.

Pictures posted online showed emergency crews battling a blaze, but Pronin provided no details of casualties.

Further southeast in Zaporizhzhia region, local governor Yuri Malashko said an infrastructure site had been hit in a drone attack. Emergency crews were at the site, but Malashko gave no details of damage or casualties.

Under the proposals, warheads three times as strong as the bomb which devastated Hiroshima would be based at RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk, according to Pentagon documents seen by The Daily Telegraph.

They set out plans for a “nuclear mission” to take place “imminently” at the base.

A young man has died after being detained this month in Russia’s Bashkortostan region after it was jolted by a series of rare protests, a rights group said on Saturday.

OVD-Info, which reports on freedom of assembly in Russia, quoted a relative as saying that Rifat Dautov had not taken part in demonstrations called to denounce the jailing of an activist, Fail Alsynov, defending the local language and culture.

Dautov was detained briefly in Ufa, chief town of the region in Russia’s Urals mountains, on the day of a protest and later in a town to the south where he was taken away by a group of men identifying themselves as police.

Local authorities subsequently said he had died but granted his family no access to the morgue. OVD-Info quoted local media as saying Dautov fell ill while being transported to a courthouse and medics pronounced him dead.

Police used tear gas and batons to break up a demonstration in a small town in Bashkortostan to denounce the sentencing of activist Fail Alsynov to four years in a penal colony.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said a Russian military plane that crashed near the border with Ukraine on Wednesday was shot down by Ukrainian air defences, whether on purpose or by mistake.

Moscow accuses Kyiv of downing the Ilyushin Il-76 plane in Russia’s Belgorod region and killing 74 people on board, including 65 captured Ukrainian soldiers en route to be swapped for Russian PoWs. It has not presented proof.

Kyiv has neither confirmed nor denied that its forces downed the aircraft and said there is no proof of who was on board. It has challenged details of Moscow’s account and called for an international investigation.

Officials in Ukraine said Russia has provided no credible evidence to back its claims that their own forces shot down a military transport plane carrying Ukrainian prisoners of war who were to be swapped for Russian POWs.

The Ukrainian agency that deals with prisoner exchanges said late Friday that Russian officials had “with great delay” provided it with a list of the 65 Ukrainians who Moscow said had died in the Wednesday plane crash in Russia’s Belgorod region.

The Independent sat down with Ukrainian war photographer Mstyslav Chernov, who has just been nominated for an Oscar for his documentary 20 Days in Mariupol.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has castigated Europe for “Russophobia” and criticised the Baltic States over human rights at the unveiling of a World War Two memorial.

Since he sent Russian troops into Ukraine nearly two years ago, Putin has been making comparisons with the fight against the Nazis in order to rally his nation.

“The regime in Kyiv exalts Hitler’s accomplices, the SS men … In a number of European countries, Russophobia is promoted as state policy,” Putin said in the Leningrad region for the 80th anniversary of the end of the Nazi siege.

The Germans’ aims then were to steal the Soviet Union’s resources and eliminate its people, he said.

Ukraine, which was part of the Soviet Union and itself suffered devastation at the hands of Hitler’s forces, rejects comparisons as spurious pretexts for a war of conquest.

In his speech, Putin also lambasted the Baltic States over human rights. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – ruled from Moscow during the Cold War but now members of the European Union and NATO military alliance – have been among the strongest critics of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“In the Baltic states, tens of thousands of people are declared subhuman, deprived of their most basic rights, and subjected to persecution,” Putin said, referring to migration crackdowns. Moscow has repeatedly accused the Baltic nations of xenophobia and treating Russian minorities as “second-class”.

Britain must be prepared to form a “citizen army” of tens of thousands in the event of war with countries such as Russia, the head of the army has warned in an ominous intervention.

Speaking at a conference on armoured warfare in southwest London, Gen Sanders said that within three years Britain should be able to increase its army to 120,000, including regular soldiers, reserves and a “strategic reserve” group – which is understood to mean retired troops who have been recalled.

Nazi crimes “will never be forgotten”, Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky has said in a Holocaust Memorial Day message.

“The manmade disaster that claimed the lives of millions of innocent people.

“Six million Jews were killed…Every new generation must learn the truth about the Holocaust. Human life must remain the highest value for all nations in the world.”